Chasing Tomorrow
by Ailyn Fair
Summary: In which Roxas is a police officer and Axel is hiding in his basement. Whiskey, long drives, and adrenaline can only do so much before the cracks begin to show.


**Chapter One: It Begins**

As a child, I was the blondest of the blonde, the shortest of the short, and overall the most innocent looking kid in town. Parents found it adorable, my brother could never stay mad at me, and I always got away with stealing candy at the store because the elderly cashiers could never bring themselves to yell at me about it.

The angelic appearance of my younger self, however, came with costs that no five year old wants to deal with. I lived in a lower middle class neighborhood, and my school was a mix of kids who were anywhere from my meager five years of age to a whole eight years. There weren't any exceptionally wealthy kids there, but there were some upper middle class kids that were terrified of pretty much everything; on the flip side, there were also kids who smoked their first cigarette on the first day of the first grade for no reason other than that was how they grew up in the slums. I hate to stereotype, but the truth of the matter was, stereotypical was the motto of my elementary school.

The costs that come with looking so innocent utterly defenseless were precisely how it sounds; I was no more than a punching bag for the older kids in the school, and for kids my age I was resented because in all honesty, what terrified five year old wants to risk being friends with the bullied kid?

I don't particularly resent anyone for the way I grew up. I wasn't the only child in the school who was a victim of bullying, and it definitely toughened me up for the years to come. By the time I had entered the first grade at age six, it was an everyday occurrence for me to be knocked over in the halls and slide tackled during recess when I wasn't even playing soccer with everyone else.

In the middle of the first grade, a new kid entered the third grade, which was the oldest class in my school. His name was Axel Martinez, and he irrevocably changed my childhood.

It had been just an ordinary day, in retrospect. I spent recess hiding behind the school and silently eating my lunch before anyone could steal it, completely unaware of the fact that there was a new kid in the school. Within a few minutes of sitting down on the cold pavement, I found myself cornered by older kids, with nowhere to run and no one to call to. It didn't even scare me anymore; at that point in time I had learned how to take a punch and I'd be damned if I ever cried. Lofty thoughts for a six year old, but I grew up rough and tough.

For some reason, however, there was a new kid in with the usual crowd. When he realized exactly why they were cornering me, he stood in front of me and ordered that the bullies stop with confidence only a child can have. For some reason that I never understood, the bullies listened. The boy immediately held out a hand to m and helped me up.

"Hi, I'm Axel!" he told me, practically shouting as he introduced himself. "I just moved here. Are you okay?"

I, unused to such friendliness from students in my school, could only nod and stutter, "H-hi, my n-name is Roxas." He seemed unperturbed by the stutter and offered to share his lunch with me, as the other boys had ruined mine.

For the rest of the year, Axel made sure that no one laid a single hand on me. And then when he left the elementary school to go to intermediate school, the legacy stuck and for the next two years I was safe from harm.

When I made it to the intermediate school, I was nine and Axel was eleven. More often than not, he had a joint on him. I tried to chastise him out of it, but he was convinced it was right and who was I to argue with him? The next two years were a blissful mix of Axel getting high while I persevered through life and tried to keep up with my wild best friend. When he graduated from the eighth grade, I was eleven years old and like him at that age, I oftentimes had a joint in my hand or a cigarette in my pocket.

It was the night after he graduated from eighth grade that Axel dropped the bomb on me. "Roxas," he said seriously, "I'm leaving this town." I'd thought it was a joke, because it was so out of character for him to be serious that there was simply no other explanation.

"You're joking, right?" By the time I had formulated the question, doubt had already begun to seep into my mind, and the fear I felt at potentially losing my best friend crept into my voice. "You can't seriously be leaving me here alone."

Axel shook his head, looking more remorseful than I'd ever seen him. "I come from up north, Roxas. My mom and I left Boston and moved down here to this middle of nowhere Tennessee suburb and it's time for us to go back up north."

I don't think I could accept that Axel was leaving, because at some point before he and his mother had packed everything they owned into her Volvo and left town, I had extracted a promise from Axel to, at some point in his life, return to see me. In return, I'd told him I owed him a favor for what he'd done for me back when I was six years old.

After Axel left, I made new friends, but they never replaced him. Hayner, Pence, Olette, and I spent far too long laying on our backs in the field, nearing the point of no return but too high to care. Before I knew it, high school was over and I had nowhere to go and no college to attend.

I got myself clean and went to the police academy and before I knew it, I was a state trooper assigned the Nashville and surrounding area. It was always interesting going into bars and clubs when I needed to even though I was only twenty years old. My life became a cycle of waking up, going to work, going home, and showering. Occasionally I went out and sometimes I went home with a girl or a guy; I wasn't too picky. The fact of the matter was, however, being a state trooper may have been what some would consider an exciting job, but I never felt the thrill.

On my twenty-first birthday, the other officers at the Nashville station threw a party for me. There was more alcohol than I had ever been exposed to before, even during my high school days, and I ended up needing another officer to drive me home.

I didn't see the huge SUV sitting in my driveway. I didn't see the man sitting on my front steps. Honestly, I didn't see much of anything until I heard that voice. It had gotten deeper over the past ten years and there was definitely a Boston accent, but I still recognized his voice.

"Hey Rox, can I cash in that favor you promised me?"


End file.
